Sean O'Neill

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EuropaUnión Europea, ,

Why is it considered an ancient liberty that must be defended at all costs, to have guilt or innocence decided by a dozen people who would rather be anywhere else than stuck in a stuffy courtroom being in turn bored and bamboozled by barristers?

Who says that those 12 jury members - open to intimidation, vulnerable to romance and faction fighting, susceptible to corruption or simply to listening to their iPods under their hijabs - can guarantee that justice will be done.

Much has been said about the “maverick” nature of the jury that returned a mixed bag of verdicts last week in what the Crown thought was an open-and-shut case against eight men accused of plotting to blow up transatlantic aircraft.…  Seguir leyendo »

Europa,

A primary school teacher in Northern Ireland in the mid-1970s posed his class of nine-year-old boys a tricky theological question: “Hands up those of you who think Protestants believe in God,” he said.

Only five of the thirty-two Roman Catholic children in the class raised their hands. The rest either didn’t know or, for one reason or another, imagined that Protestants worshipped some unknown deity.

I was one of the ill-informed children and, as the teacher tried to explain that Protestants believed in exactly the same God that we supposedly did, clearly remember experiencing a rising sense of shame at my ignorance.…  Seguir leyendo »